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What makes it different

Signing documents electronically in Portugal used to mean choosing between two bad options.

On one side, the international e-signature tools: easy to use, but what they produce is almost always a simple signature — a visual stamp and a record that somebody clicked. They sell “legal validity” without explaining that this validity is left to a court’s free assessment.

On the other, the traditional qualified route: a digital certificate bought from a provider, a card reader, software to install. Legally solid, and impractical if you want a client to sign a contract this afternoon.

AssinaJá starts from a simple observation: Portuguese citizens already hold a qualified electronic identity — Chave Móvel Digital — and need buy nothing to use it. What was missing was a platform that integrated it with the usability of the generic tools.

Each point below is an implemented behaviour, not an intention.

Every document leaves sealed, before anyone signs

Section titled “Every document leaves sealed, before anyone signs”

AssinaJá applies a certifying seal to the document at the moment it is sent, before the first signer touches it. That seal blocks changes to page content, permitting only field filling and the addition of signatures.

The consequence is counter-intuitive: even a document signed only with a simple visual signature leaves the platform as a cryptographically sealed PDF, with a qualified timestamp and integrity verification. That is not what a generic simple-signature tool produces.

Qualified signatures with the national eID

Section titled “Qualified signatures with the national eID”

The AMA integration allows signing with Chave Móvel Digital without a purchased certificate, without a card reader, and without installing anything — just a phone and the signing PIN.

The result is validated by independent tools as a qualified signature, with legal equivalence to a handwritten signature across the EU. See Qualified signatures with CMD.

Proof of professional capacity, not only identity

Section titled “Proof of professional capacity, not only identity”

With professional attributes (SCAP), the document gains signatures from the certifying bodies themselves, attesting the capacity in which the signer signed. An opinion signed by a lawyer no longer rests on the claim that they are one.

Every event on a document is recorded with a SHA-256 hash incorporating the previous event’s hash. Altering or removing a record breaks the chain detectably, and the system recomputes it on demand to confirm.

A record anyone could edit would prove nothing — the chaining is what gives it weight. See Audit trail.

Signed documents verify in Adobe Reader or the European Commission’s validator, using only what is embedded in the file. The platform does not need to be reachable, nor the company to exist.

Worth spelling out what that implies: whoever signs is not dependent on us to prove they signed.

Organisations that require it can connect their own Azure Blob Storage account. Documents then live in the customer’s tenant rather than the platform’s shared storage.

AssinaJá exposes an official MCP server, with scope-based authorisation and consent recorded as auditable evidence. An assistant can prepare documents without ever touching the user’s account, and cannot send them unless granted that permission.

The policy that makes AI-created documents start as drafts is what makes this usable without anxiety — see Configure organisation policies.

One organisation can make its templates available for others to generate documents from, while each document, signing process and billing stays with the organisation that generated it.

What sets AssinaJá apart is not doing the same thing faster. It is that the strongest signature Portuguese law recognises — the qualified one, equivalent to a handwritten signature — stops requiring equipment, purchases or installations, and comes within reach of anyone with a phone and an activated Chave Móvel Digital.

And because that is a large claim, the site also states where the limits are.